Towards the integrated management of content

Abstract

This article describes the process used to create a repository for the storage of the educational content managed by the Grupo UOC and gives an account of the integrated management processes that form part of this project. The design of the repository was based on the development of instructional units called learning objects. In this case, the learning object was conceived of as a unit of content that is the result of the aggregation of other smaller component units. The concept used was that of learning objects as the smallest manageable units rather than learning objects as the smallest possible units. Rather than creating a repository geared towards homogeneous learning objects, we have opted for one that is composed of heterogeneous objects and is capable of incorporating third party sources of content generated by content agents outside of the university. All of these learning objects are catalogued in accordance with the metadata markup standards defined by the IMS Global Learning Consortium to ensure that the content can be discovered and accessed by both teachers and data managers.